


Our World, Our Territory

by BurrSquee, Tikor



Series: Castebook: Casteless [4]
Category: Exalted
Genre: Gen, Lunars, POV First Person, Roleplaying Character, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-20 01:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14250165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurrSquee/pseuds/BurrSquee, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tikor/pseuds/Tikor
Summary: Herein are the lonely paths of four Casteless as they roam without their kin.





	1. Introduction

Lunars lead famously varied lifestyles, but the Casteless find themselves in stranger places yet. Among the Silver Pact there is the constant of allies willing to band together for common defense, but among the Casteless, they stand alone. At least, they do not stand with other Lunars; they often find stranger bedfellows before their brethren can convince them to join the Silver Pact. This chapter describes what these lone Lunars think of the tribes that have taken them in, and their thoughts on their surroundings.


	2. Faithful Pia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faithful Pia's stones and dreams.

**Kether Rock**  
The keep of Kether Rock is home now. It was strange, to think of a home without mom, without the road, all in one place. At first I thought it would _never_ happen. But one day I looked back, and that’s how I felt about this sun-baked pile of stones. Odd how it sneaks up on you.

 **The Cult of the Illuminated**  
The priests and the cultists are just normal people, just like everybody else. They do their jobs, they have their own hopes and fears, and they say their prayers. Just, not to any calendar, but to the Illuminated Ones and their father the Unconquered Sun. They’re a little repetitive. Ok, a _lot_. But I like talking to them. Getting them to say something else besides the stock phrases. Giving them a laugh or a hope or a new thought. Everybody here is working on the same project: returning the Illuminated Ones to power so that they can save us all. Everyone’s well fed and has enough water. We know each other, and trust each other. Which is more than I could say about most caravans.

 **Jak**  
He is just the _sweetest_! I’ve been closer than his shadow since he saved me. Well, I try to be. Sometimes, I get the feeling he’d like to be alone. But even then he’s nice to me, and he always listens when I talk to him. 

I try to be nice back, ‘cause, you know... just _‘cause_. I fetch his meals, I carry his water, I mend his clothes, I toss his chamberpot, and I make sure his horse Moonlight gets a carrot and a good rub down. Not because I have to. And the priests have scolded me for softening him. They say the Illuminated Ones should be challenged. But what challenge is it to bring a meal up from the kitchens? He _always_ thanks me. And, lately, I’ve been catching him looking back a little _longer_. That was, before our last scouting mission, anyway.

 **Nightmares**  
I have nightmares, sometimes. Alright, _often_. Not every night. But when I do, they scare me… mostly. 

Most of the time, I’m out in an oasis that stretches forever. Like, I keep thinking I’ll see the grasslands or the desert after the next thick bunch of trees, but it never comes. I’m me, but I’m taller, and my feet aren’t feet, they’re paws. My hands are larger, and furred. I sniff the air, changing direction a bunch. I don’t know how I know where I’m going, but I always feel like I’m on the right track.

When I catch up to what I’m hunting, things move very fast. I hardly see what I pounce on, and hot blood fills my mouth. I break necks, rip off wings, puncture fur with my teeth, over and over again. Yet, I never get marked in return.

Then, when I carry the carcass back to the caravan, they’re waiting for me. They bow down and pray, they chant, they’re reverent. It’s all to _me_. They take the kill and prepare the meal while I retire to my tent. Inside my tent are several men, with tan skin and oil all over their hard bodies but not a shirt on a single one. We do... well, we do all _sorts_ of things. When I snap to order them up, we all leave the tent and feast and dance around the fire long into the night.


	3. Madame Vert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Madame Vert's secrets and jealousies.

**Salinan Society**  
I feel, among the Salinan Society, a true sense of belonging. Perhaps it is only my familiarity to the group, or nostalgia for what initially attracted me to Tarn, I don’t know. I find my interest in the thaumaturgical arts motivated more by the social nature of mutual discovery than the tricks themselves. Luna’s gifts far surpass them. I am well on the way to mastering the Art of Alchemy; once I grasp that I anticipate other rituals that require pure or exotic materials to be more easily achieved. For now I am studying Kasnus, that Dragon-Blooded of the East who recorded many life-giving rituals in that distant corner of Creation. I use the connections I still have in the Azure cabal to refine my understanding from my research and studying, Kasnus can be as hard to read as ancient sap. Thankfully most of them are old friends of my husband, and so are happy to share their knowledge, especially if it pertains to their work as I aid them. With newer or unfamiliar members, however, I am more subtle. I do not want to let on that I am practicing more than what would be appropriate for an outsider, a mere widow of a member.

 **My Many Personalities**  
I am coming to know my forms well. I behave as I always have in my human form, meekly nonthreatening. This is useful in it’s own rights, because I would be unable to achieve much in the human world without this form. My other forms are far from acceptable in normal society, but for harvesting materials from the wilderness and the Wyld, being able to breathe water or glide in the air, they are immensely useful. Through careful journaling I have come to learn that, mentally, I am not the same me in all forms. In my true form, the meld of human myself and my spirit, I am adventurous and sensual. I am beautiful and brave. Each of my animal shapes has a pronouced wanderlust, though I have yet to thoroughly test if this effect is increased due to selecting migratory species. In all shapes I retain my continuity of self. My thirst for knowledge transcends any of my shapes.

 **The Dragon-Blooded**  
I hear The Dragon-Blooded who chased me have boasted of driving me off. An easy lie to cover their failure to track me. Good riddance. If I never see another Dragon-Blooded again, it’ll be too soon. I read them too often already.

 **Lunar Castes and Factions**  
I feel I may have been a little hasty with my interactions with Light Sinks Deep. I have found that many Lunar are not as crass as he was, and not as insistent upon dictating my life. The more respectful suggest that I become tattooed, but they do not require it. But I still refuse them, mirroring their respectful manners. I enjoy each of Luna’s faces, the way my abilities seem to change with the moon. They offer more opportunities than those that are cited by the Silver Pact. Anybody can buy friends if they’re lonely. 

But until then, I still have to deal with the ignorance of some Lunars who insist that I am a “Bastard of Luna”. It infuriates me to think that they undervalue my abilities simply because I have not been restricted the ways that they have been. I will show them anyway. Luna bears no bastards.


	4. Echinna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Echinna's thoughts and prayers.

**My Cage**  
My world is a mere hundred yards across, half as many high, and half of that filled with dirt. At least most of the time. The Wyld within it makes mockery of consistent measurement, of consistent direction, of consistency itself.

It still has the capacity to surprise me, even after centuries more or less alone with it. At its center is a great bonefire of silver, burning the Essence of what used to be a Demense, which the Wyld tells me is the Arcane Redoubt. The bonefire’s shape and size and features do change, but less than those that surround it. I have lived in a lush forest of forever fall, a winter wonderland of sugar snow, a desert full of living mirages, and under a constant rain of cherry blossoms. I have also lived choking in smoke every day for weeks, covered in a constant rain of oil that seared my skin, and under so much water that what little air remained was stale with my every breath taxing its life giving Essence.

Sometimes, even when the landscape allows, I can’t sleep. The Wyld has moods. For a decade it decided I needed visitors; they came and went constantly, mocking my imprisonment. I would drag about, exhausted. As soon as I’d close my eyes, I’d be opening them again to a new visitor. Sometimes they would want a bite of me. Sometimes they would want to enslave my mind. Sometimes they simply wanted to tell me a good story and share a good laugh. They had varied desires, but never among them was rest. They were immune to that weakness. I am not. At least, the me who is not The Beast is not. That monster has raved for days without tiring. I am glad that time has passed and I can rest my eyes when I please.

 **My Captors**  
If I could have had the courage to stand and fight, to rip out their throats instead of being herded into this confinement…

That line of thinking is well-worn, and useless. But, when they came by to tend my cage I could not help but let it course through my mind. I have thought often about why they would trouble me to live instead of slaying me like in their stories. The Silver Pact told me that I was reincarnated from another, Ochi, the Flightless Bird. Perhaps I’m less trouble here than my spirit leaving to become another Anathema, however that works. When they chanted for days to rebuild the walls that held me, I thought that my soul being free must be a great deal of trouble for them. Enough trouble, that I might have had a chance to rip them apart.

 **Luna**  
I have prayed for change. I have honored Luna, what little I know of her, with prayer and sacrifices. Sometimes I wonder if my little corner of the Wyld was more actively fluid than others as the result of my prayers. What does not change are the walls that hold me, not by her power, anyway. The Beast hacks at them. I do not know if she cannot or will not aid me. Or if she already has, and I cannot see her blessing.


	5. The Chimera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Chimera's prey.

**Plants**  
The plant is not worth hunting to the Chimera. It does eat them, but they have no hearts, make no change. The Chimera will grow a mouth on its hand when it brushes past a leaf, just like it will with contact to most things. That mouth, even reaching for sustenance, will catch on the soft, sap-filled flesh of that leaf, will chew and swallow it. A brief flash of sunlight, a feeling of the wood Essence on the air, of the water Essence in the ground, of the earth Essence on which it rests will flash through its mind. But it will not sate the hunger. It will not change the Chimera’s form. So the remains of the leaf will be passed without even slowing the Chimera on its hunt for better meals made from hot blood and concentrated Essence.

 **Beasts**  
Beasts can smell the Chimera coming. They can see the predator within the Chimera, and attempt to flee. But if the Chimera is hungry enough, it will chase them, squealing, chipring, or dashing after their escape. Wherever they run, the Chimera follows. When it catches them it rips their bodies apart and laps up every drop of blood that spills forth with masses of tongues and mouths that sprout from anywhere on its body that is dampened by viscera. 

The Chimera will then dream with half of its mind, keeping the other half awake and looking for prey. The sleeping half will feel sated, but not the waking half. The waking half still scans its environment for the next meal.

 **Men**  
Men are rare, in the grand scheme of Creation. At least where the Chimera roams. Hundreds of beasts, thousands of plants will pass by the Chimera before it sees a single woman. But when it does, the focus of the twisted hunter crystallizes, as close to orderly thought as it comes enters its mind. Men, or those who wear the shapes of men, are most likely to have Essence to lap from their broken bodies. So the Chimera breaks them, and finds out.

 **Things stranger yet**  
The Chimera’s palate is not disturbed by the ash of ghosts, by the acid of demons, by the fire of elementals, or by the retribution of gods. They are all delectable, each a flavor meant to savor. Does the rain not fall on every rock equally? Does the wind not rustle each leaf? Does the fire not heat all within the reach of its flames? Do all of Gaia’s creations not live? Does the earth not support any who stand upon it? So it is with the Chimera's hunger and its prey. 

**Creation**  
The Chimera does not, on most days, have a way to see Creation for what it is. A filter of hunger transforms all that enters its many eyes, its forked tongues, its rows of ears, its orifices capable of smell, or that which touches its changing skin. Categories of sought prey and the snubbed not-prey result. There is no nuance available to sense beauty, serenity, balance, or acceptance. There is only the story of the hunter, ever changing, and the hunted, ever caught. The Chimera only sees the trees small enough to consume, it has no conception of the forest. Should the Chimera reach sufficient size it may begin to see cities, to see mountains, to see oceans, to see forests. But its feelings on these new things would only be whether or not to eat them, unless a recent eaten memory intruded its thoughts.


End file.
